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Book C-Saj^kTa" 



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THE LIFE AND TIMES 



OF 



William Harris Crawford, 



OF GEORGIA. 



^^7 

^57 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered by Charles N. West, A. M., 



BEFORE THE 



Georgia Historical Society, at Savannah, Ga., May 2, 1892. 






PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 
1S92. 



1,0 l.la'l 

PROVIDENCE : 

Snow & Farnham, Pkimers, 

1S92. 



\ 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society : 

About sixty years ago, could you have strolled into 
the little court-room in the village of Lexington, near 
our Georgian Athens, you would have seen presiding 
as judge a very tall and strongly built man of some- 
what more than middle age, but who, upon closer 
scrutiny, had the appearance of one who had grown 
older than his actual years. Observing him only very 
slightly, you would have said to yourself that this 
judge was apparently far above his bar of lawyers and 
his court-room company, and, had you known nothing 
of his history, you would have marveled how it had 
happened to him in life that such a man as he was 
should be there upon that bench. 

A large, long head, with bold brow, from beneath 
which a pair of shrewd, kindly gray eyes looked 
straight at you, — seemingly straight through you — 
a large nose, firm compressed lips — the firmest lips 
you ever saw — full round chin, and strong jaw, made 
up a face too strong and commanding, but for that 
kindly expression in those bluish gray eyes. And 
those eyes ! What a world of experience and thought 



4 

in them and in that characteristic mark between the 
brows! What firmness of intent and tenacity of pur- 
pose in that mouth, and the lower part of the face. 

The court over which he presided was the ordinary 
rural Superior Court-room, that so many of you have 
often seen. In front of the clerk, a small saw-dust 
covered space filled with tables, at which sat the little 
local bar, and some circuit-riding lawyers — big guns 
from neighboring towns; behind them a crowd of 
countrymen sitting on rough pine benches, and intent 
on the proceedings, each with a certain cowlike, cud- 
chewing movement of face ; rustic sheriffs and rustic 
bailiffs walking around amid bar and juries — hats on 
for sfgn of office, and full of self-importance. From 
his high desk, down upon the scene of petty strife 
and perpetual small appeal to the weaknesses of the 
human heart, in jury assembled, looked this man, who 
would have had no fit place anywhere in that room 
except upon the judge's seat, and hardly seemed fitly 
placed there. He was not sixty years of age at the 
time of which I am speaking, but his life was already 
lived, and had for him nothing but memories. I think 
that often as he turned his head from the wearisome 
crowd, and gazed absently through the dingy little 
windows, his thoughts must have escaped from that 
dull environment, and carried him far away into 
strange scenes, in which he had played no small part 
with people whose names you may yet find in history. 



About i8ii,if vagrant curiosity had carried 3'ou 
into the Senate of the United States, or if you had 
gone there with a mind to hear Mr. James A. Bayard, 
of Delaware, or old John Gaillard, of South Carolina, 
you would have seen the same man whom I have de- 
scribed controlling the deliberations of the Senate as 
its president. There were no marks of age upon his 
countenance then ; but youth — determination — power. 

While Bonaparte, with burning heart, was restlessly 
pacing the terraces of Elba, if you had been in France 
and were sufficiently conspicuous to ask presentation 
to Louis XVIII., our friend of the court-room would 
have been the proper person there to do this service 
for you as the American Minister to the Tuilleries ; 
and no one in Paris could half so well commend 
you — only a semi-barbarian — to Mme. de Stael as 
her friend, that man, one of the gayest of diplomats 
there. 

If in 1820 you had been allowed to see the Cabinet 
of President Monroe in council met, you would per- 
haps have thought it very stupid. Mr. Monroe was 
not inspiring ; John C. Calhoun was very stately ; and 
the satisfying goodness of John Quincy Adams, Secre- 
tary of State, was always chilling. But a strong, quick 
step might be heard, and the man of the court would 
stride in, breezy — alert — towering six feet three; and 
forthwith the Cabinet would brighten, and look as if 
something quite pleasant had befallen each of them, 
except John Quincy, who would afterwards go home 



with black rage and despair tugging at his heart be- 
cause all men so loved the Secretary of the Treasury, 
even to the intolerable point of wishing to make him 
President. 

Such were some of the scenes throuQ^h which the 
absent thought of the Superior Court judge must 
have wandered at times. His name was William 
Harris Crawford, of Georgia. He achieved no great 
feat in statesmanship. He wrote no page of original 
thought that is now read, or which in any likelihood 
has ever been seen by anyone in this room. He lived 
an active, busy, bustling life, and died, leaving little 
else than personal memories behind him — memories 
which have so far passed away that his name now 
evokes nothing more than a vague recollection that 
some such man once lived. Yet he was the ablest, 
greatest man ever in this State; and it will be my 
task to-night to bring him back to us for a short half 
hour; to clothe his name with circumstances of fact; 
and to call back from tradition and the criticisms of 
friends and foes a trace — only a trace, perhaps — of the 
powerful personality which once was his, and now is 
dead almost beyond recall. 

Georgia claims Mr. Crawford as her son, and his 
affection for her afifords certainly some color for her 
claim. She cannot say that she gave him the honors 
that he received. She cannot even urcre in his case 
the most dubious of all i^references shown by a distin- 
guished child — that of birth upon her soil — a mark of 



approval which the person most concerned cannot very 
well either prevent or confer, but which nevertheless 
seems to be as highly esteemed by most nationalities 
as if the wise infant had so decided. But to such 
honor as may be derived from Crawford's birth Vir- 
ginia is really entitled ; and such is the curious strength 
of the particular national vanity to which I have just 
adverted, that this circumstance of his advent in the 
State of the " Mother of Presidents " had afterwards 
far more to do with his favor in the eyes of a Con- 
gressional caucus than any assistance received from 
his adopted State. 

Mr. Crawford having been born in Amherst County, 
Virginia, in 1 771, in 1779 his family removed to Edge- 
field County, South Carolina, and in 1783 to Columbia 
County, Georgia. History records the name of neither . 
his father nor mother, while assuredly the industrious ' 
genealogist inquiring of the many reputable people 
of this State connected by blood or marriage with the 
Crawford family, would find no mystery in his search 
for either. They were certainly Scotch people of ex- 
cellent origin and character. Georgia became their 
final home, and there, near the banks of what was 
then the crystal Savannah, they passed the remainder 
of their toilsome days, and reared a family of six lusty 
sons of great size, one of them only of great mental 
stature, and with him solely we have to do. 

You can easily fancy the scenes of young Crawford's 
early life. The Revolutionary War was hardly over 



8 

when the family settled in Georgia, and a tide of im- 
migration was pouring south into the lovel)' country 
north of Augusta. We may suppose without danger 
of mistake that the Crawfords were almost pioneers in 
Columbia County, so far as permanent settlement is 
concerned ; and it is certain that the future statesman's 
youthful days were passed in the midst of those scenes 
of rudeness and hardship which are inseparable from 
the opening of a country by the advance guard. As a 
lad he followed the plow with his stalwart brothers, 
but, fortunately for his education, his county was fav- 
ored by the residence there of an excellent teacher in 
the person of Dr. Moses Waddel, to whom Crawford 
first became pupil, and, afterwards, assistant. Subse- 
quently he taught school in Augusta, at the famous 
old Richmond Academy, until 1799, when, having in 
the meantime studied law, he was admitted to the bar, 
and removed to Lexington, in Oglethorpe County, not 
many miles away from his old home, or from the prin- 
cipal town of that portion of the State. Augusta it- 
self was then scarcely more than a large village — a 
small straggling town along the river bank — to which 
the interior farmers, not then very many or very pros- 
perous, but plain, hardworking country folk, labori- 
ously carried their produce in carts, to bring back with 
them their economical purchases; and the adjoining- 
counties and villages, while rapidly opening up and 
developing under the tide of life pouring over the 
Savannah river, resembled in none of the circumstances 



of living that cotton belt of Georgia which we have 
known. Masses of forest stretched westward from the 
river, broken only by an occasional clearing made by 
such people as Crawford's family, and crossed by very 
few and rough roads; until, not far north of the small 
hamlet to which Crawford had removed, was reached 
the wild domain still possessed by the Creeks and 
Cherokees. 

An infant before the Revolutionary war — a lad in 
its hard times — and a young man in the rough set- 
tling day of the eastern counties, we cannot suppose 
that Crawford commenced his career with much of 
what we now consider personal cultivation. Indeed, 
uncontradicted tradition attributes to him, during the 
course of his whole life, a want of refinement, — a dis- 
qualification which brings his natural abilities into 
only sharper outline, when we realize, that, so born 
and bred, he afterwards became rather a favorite in 
that foreign capital which esteemed refinement and ele- 
gance of manner the highest of virtues, and in which 
a faux pas in etiquette was worse than a crime. 

He was not altogether unknown to the people of 
the State when he commenced to practice law. Not 
only had he, as a teacher in a very popular school, be- 
fore the days of moral suasion, established close rela- 
tions with many of its young men, but he had come 
before the people in one political matter of the great- 
est gravity. There was great excitement in Georgia in 
those days, concerning what is known as the Yazoo 



lO 

fraud. Georgia had a splendid empire of land west- 
ward, even to the Mississippi, upon which greedy eyes 
had fastened. Eyes from Virginia — eyes from South 
Carolina — no lack of similar eyes from Georgia her- 
self — all covetous, hungry, wolf-like. Very pliable leg- 
islatures to be found, and a Governor Matthews, with 
honest intentions, perhaps, and undoubted personal 
bravery, but without sufficient capacity to withstand 
subtle assaults upon his mind. Now here were ad- 
mirable opportunities for personal work and artful 
influences — not unlike development days again in 
Georgia after 1866. Personal work and influences — 
no doubt termed energy and enterprise by the owners 
of the multitudinous greedy eyes — had due effect upon 
persuadable legislatures and befogged Governor, and 
the State's empire was shared out liberally, to the 
great disgust of most Georgians, some of whom — 
many of whom — we may hope were honest, and many 
we may be sure were mournful, chiefly because no 
slice of the loaf had come to them. But honest or 
covetous, patriotic or revengeful, a fine ferment arose 
— Georgia in a turmoil. One Senator, James Gunn, 
backing the owners of the greedy eyes; the other, 
James Jackson, resigning his seat to hurry honie and 
fight the industrious developers. I think that in these 
days Jackson would have staid in Washington, and let 
the other men do the fighting. But home he came, and 
wrote and talked, and then and thus came on hotter 
wrath and a new legislature, who undid — as far as new 



1 1 



steps could undo the old — the canny work of the last; 
and then with solemn procession and formal procla- 
mation consigned to fire — some say to fire drawn from 
Heaven — the bill and act, which had been the State's 
visible outcome of the Yazoo fraud. What delight 
must young Crawford have found in all this fury and 
ferment over patent bribery and corruptible legisla- 
tures. Being young, of course he was on the patriotic 
side ; and while still a school teacher, in the winter of 
1795 addressed a petition to the Governor, intended 
to stiffen up that weak gubernatorial spine and to en- 
lighten that pondering brain against fatal compliance 
with the wishes of the covetous. But while the peti- 
tion was fruitless, its writer was not forgotten ; for as 
soon as he came to the bar, and yet unknown as a law- 
yer, he and Marbury were appointed to digest the laws 
of this State — a distinction clearly attributable to con- 
spicuousness not derived from his own profession. 

A classical scholar, a lawyer, and not disinclined to 
take a hand in matters political, we need not be sur- 
prised to find Crawford in 1802 in the legislature, 
where he sat until 1806, when, upon the death of Sen- 
ator George Jones, he was elected Senator of the 
United States in his place. 

In this election Mr. Crawford may be said to have 
literally fought his way. Duels were of course a com- 
mon mode of settlement of disputes, and he had the 
bad fortune to kill one bully by the name of Van 
Allen, a first cousin of Martin Van Buren; and to be 



12 

wounded by another, afterwards orovernor of this 
State. To Governor Clark he was subsequently in- 
debted for much distress, for he always remained 
Crawford's bitter enemy, and the fountain of all sorts 
of calumnies and murderous assaults on his character. 
In Crawford's worse contest, while the presidency 
was trembling in the balance, there came from Geor- 
gia a poisonous arrow shot by Clark with intent to 
kill. There is some satisfaction in recordinor that 
although the presidency was not for Crawford, it was 
not Clark's shaft that brought down the mighty game. 
Through easy ways, or rough ways, to the Senate 
Crawford went. Now here was a real man, given by 
Georgia to the country — the best man that Georgia 
ever had — with full complement of qualities for great- 
ness in him, but with little more when the gift was 
made. Just thi rty-fo ur^ years old — not seven years 
from his teacher's desk, what political views did he 
have to commend him in the highest council. Fancy 
how far off the Capital really was. By land the 
journey there from Georgia required more time than 
now to go around the world. No daily paper in the 
up-country recording the views of political parties : 
political thinkers not in touch with each other, either 
to agree or to expose : no crystalization of men or 
thought, in Georgia, in matters national. Nothing 
but the obsolete remains of former contests over 
federalism, become now in most men's minds a mere 
tradition since the adoption of a Federal Constitution, 



13 



however immortal and imperishably true many of the 
rejected contentions may have been and may yet show 
themselves to be. 

The stock of political views held by Crawford when 
he went to the Senate, upon such matters as finance, 
political economy, foreign relations, and naval and 
war administration, would not to-day suffice for the 
editorial management of a country weekly. But the 
big brain was there, and his career shows that he 
took in and assimilated political knowledge with the 
rapidity of a perfect mental digestion. Only notice 
his strides as he walks in ways political, towering 
among his brother Senators. A tyro in politics — in 
five years President of the Senate. An infant in 
foreign affairs — in seven years an excellent Minister 
to France. A novice in matters of war — in nine 
years an acceptable Secretary of War. Certainly 
ignorant of all finance — in ten years a most success- 
ful administrator of the Treasury. That present, the 
rough diamond so given by Georgia to the country 
was never returned to the keeping of the State until 
worn out, its brilliancy gone, and nearly useless. 
Five years only the representative of the State — 
alwavs after that the nation's man, until he was able 
to serve the nation no longer. The country saw that 
it had in him a man beyond most men — of such mind, 
and nerve, and heart, that he could remain no State's 
man, but belonged to the largest sphere of work for 
which men were born ; and the nation took him from 



14 

the State, and kept him in her service, in this or that 
high office, and would have made him its chief ; and 
never did he cease to rise, and never did he go back 
one step in his wonderful career, until his splendid 
frame gave way. 

Doubtless, deep and laborious digging into the 
records of the Senate in those seven years of his life 
there will show what Crawford learned to think about 
many matters. Labor useless enough to us for the 
purposes of this search for the man ; revealing, if we 
could follow^ and sum up his utterances, some glimpses 
perhaps of the great capacity which made him soon 
acknowledged to be the first among men of his sort : 
but needless digging in the presence of the great fact 
of a luminous intelligence always equal to the step 
before him. In 1812 he was elected President pro 
tern, of the Senate upon the sickness of Vice-Presi- 
dent Clinton. English aggression was at that time 
rampant, as it had been for 3^ears ; and during those 
years war was always impending. Between Bona- 
parte absorbent of the earth, and England com- 
bining, cajoling, bribing, persuading, compelling the 
earth against Bonaparte, what escape was there for 
the poor little much despised republic ? First Citizen 
Genest almost forced her into arms against France ; 
and afterwards she could not decently evade the issue 
with France's foe, for which in truth that foe was little 
to blame. For that war Crawford was not at first in- 



15 

clined, but he finally believed it to be an inevitable 
necessity, and the sooner over the better. 

If the traditions handed down in writing by men 
who knew him and his times well are to be believed, 
President Madison quickly recognized in him the 
breadth of mind which rapidly changed Crawford — 
an uninformed countryman from Georgia — into a 
statesman, able to understand and deal with the 
greatest international affairs : and frequently sought, 
obtained, and relied upon his advice. The probabil- 
ity of the truth of this tradition is enhanced by the 
fact that in 1813 Madison offered Mr. Crawford 
the portfolio of War, which for some reason not 
known to me was declined. Little glory had come 
to the army out of that war, and little was yet to 
come until Jackson's victory at New Orleans after 
the peace was signed ; and it may be that Crawford 
saw in the peculiar features of the army of this 
country an undertaking against which any man's 
genius would be feeble and incompetent until the 
people would be more persuaded to resign individual 
rights for the public safety. At any rate, he declined 
and was not responsible for the absurd military fail- 
ures of the war : but, instead of the office so refused, 
accepted, in April, 181 3, the appointment of Minister 
to France. 

Mr. Crawford arrived at Lorient, France, on July 
II, 181 3, having crossed the ocean on board the 
United States brio- Arnis. What were his adven- 
tures in eluding British cruisers history does not re- 



i6 

cord, but to France he got safely, and found it in a 
momentous year. Napoleon's mistakes, of the ' sort 
that caused his ruin, had all been made, and future 
mistakes scarcely could count against him. 

Spain, with its record of failures, blunders, savage 
coercion, and desperate Saragossa, lay behind him. 
Burning Moscow, and a forlorn escape of gaunt and 
starving remnants of a grand army over snowy wastes 
were of the last year's wretched work. All Europe, 
except Austria and Saxony, had joined hands against 
him ; and Austria and Saxony counted the days until 
they could safely turn their coats. Lutzen and Baut- 
zen had been hardly fought, in vain ; and the tiger at 
bay was facing his enemies in armistice before closing 
in final grapple. 

When Crawford arrived in Paris, Austria had not 
turned against her Corsican son-in-law, and Dresden 
had not been fought. All France was a great military 
camp. The conscripts, down to the boys of sixteen 
years, had gone to lay their bones in German fields. 
The Monitertr was daily resounding the proclama- 
tions, appeals and lying bulletins of the great gladia- 
tor. France, ever self-deceived, was hopeful still of 
her emperor's success; proud of his glory, and ago- 
nized over her bankruptcy in money and men. Her 
women were mourning their lost children, and, with 
hearts almost stilled from fear, awaited the next day's 
news. They said, " So the cold came and our army 
perished. And now those who are leaving us are the 
same as already dead." 



17 
Says a charming writer : 

" On the 8th of January a large placard was posted 
on the town hall stating that the emperor would levy, 
after a Senatus Consultus^ as they said in those' days, 
in the first place, 150,000 conscripts of 181 3 ; then 100 
cohorts of the first call of 181 2, who thought they had 
already escaped; then 100,000 conscripts of from 1809 
to 18 1 2, and so on to the end. So that every loop- 
hole was closed, and we would have a larger army than 
before the Russian expedition." 

Such was the condition of France, and its desperate 
mind outside of Paris, while Crawford was journeying 
from Lorient to Paris, where he arrived on July 15th. 
But Paris was gg-y, as Paris has always been gay, ex- 
cept in memorable days not so long ago ; and Craw- 
ford, though not for some time officially received by the 
emperor, and having done those things that American 
ministers should do, made the most of Paris. Only 
the records of state departments will show why he 
was not received at once ; and it affords a curious in- 
stance of the absolutely personal government of 
Bonaparte. 

There was practically no ministry of foreign affairs 
in Paris, the Duke de Bassano, who was permitted to 
masquerade as foreign minister, being kept by Napo- 
leon at his hand, so that he could know and control 
every word to foreign powers. He himself had things 
upon his mind at Dresden and Leipsic of a kind that 
gave him no time to think of a modest American 



i8 

minister, and it was November before he hastily got 
back to Paris and civil affairs, when at last Crawford 
was pleasantly received. 

The records of our own state department show of this 
reception that, as he had expected, his first interview 
with the duke took place on the 13th of November, 
and was followed on the next day by his official recep- 
tion, which, as he wrote on the 19th, "was intended to 
be as acceptable to me as it could be made." 

Not only did the emperor acquit himself of the 
common ofificial amenities, but took pains, "after 
mass," says Crawford, " to be particularly pleasant with 
the minister plenipotentiary, asking him a number of 
questions, and praising the manner in which our con- 
tention with Great Britain had been conducted, and 
making flattering mention of the many great men of the 
United States." And thus the new minister was re- 
ceived into the good graces of the moribund empire, 
the emperor complimenting the Americans present 
upon the grand air of their representative.* 

Tradition hands down to us for Crawford a orreat 
social success in Paris, and books have recorded the 
fact without circumstances. One patriotic admirer 
has written that he gained the favor of Parisian soci- 
ety by his open manners and instructive conversation. 

Crawford was so apt, and fell in so easily with things 
around him that we find no difficulty about the open 
manners ; and if we had any reason to think that he 

* Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson, p. 345. 



^9 

spoke French, we might easily credit the instructive 
conversation. Perhaps he acquired it while he was 
awaiting the return of the peripatetic ministry of 
foreign affairs ; but I fear that we must suspect that his 
conquests and friendships, like those of most Ameri- 
can ministers, were confined to those persons who 
spoke his own language. Still they were many in 
Paris ; enough to create a sufficiently large society for 
the truth, in our eyes, of the statement that he was 
much liked, even though of " limited learning and 
unpolished manners," as another quite partial writer * 
puts it. The fact must be that his gaiety of heart 
and bonhommie served him in place of that refine- 
ment so dearly loved by Frenchmen. 

The manners of the better class of Americans never 
did, — even to later times than those of Crawford, — 
commend themselves to the thorough Parisian. How 
that poor Frenchman, the Chevalier de Bacourt, must 
have suffered in that horrid American contact when 
he was minister at Washington as late as 1842. He 
writhes in his agony of spirit, and caps the climax of 
his miseries by an account of a state dinner of Presi- 
dent Tyler, speaking thus of Mr. Webster, the secre- 
tary of state : 

"The Madeira wine, of which he drank entirely too 
much, made him, not only amiable in the American 
sense, but most tenderly affectionate. He took my 
arms with both hands and said, ' My dear Bacourt, 



* Ex.Gov. George R. Gilmer's " Georgians." 



20 

I am so glad to see you to-night. More so than I 
ever felt at any other time. I do not know why. 
Perhaps I have not been so friendly with you as I 
ought to have been ; but if you are willing, we will 
become bosom friends. You will find me a good 
comrade. Come and see me every day without cere- 
mony. It will give me great pleasure, my dear Ba- 
court, for really I think you are charming. 

" This flattering declaration was made with a 
drunken stammer, and — shall I dare to say it ? — with 
hiccoughs, which made it very disagreeable to be near 
this minister of foreisfn affairs." 

Bacourt was finical and critical, but the fact remains 
that, while America could justly be proud of its youth- 
ful vigor and vitality ; of its growth and pluck ; of its 
brains and energy, the manners of its politicians were 
not those in which Parisian society rejoiced. Even 
Thackeray — who was himself of rough ways, though 
of gentle heart — even Thackeray, in no wise averse to, 
or critical of, the American gentleman, cannot forbear 
a caricature of an American minister to France : 

" So he, the doctor, nodded to the queen of France, 
but kept his hat on as he faced the French monarch, 
and did not cease whittling the cane he carried in his 
hand. ' I was waiting for you, sir,' the king said peev- 
ishly, in spite of the alarmed pressure that the queen 
gave his royal arm. ' The business of the republic, sire, 
must take precedence even of your majesty's wishes,' 
replied Dr. Franklin. ' When I was a poor print- 
er's boy, and ran errands, no lad could be more punct- 



21 

ual than poor Ben Franklin ; but all other things 
must yield to the service of the United States of 
North America. I have done. What would you, 
sire? ' And the intrepid republican eyed the monarch 
with a serene and easy dignity which made the descend- 
ant of St. Louis feel ill at ease." 

Satire aside, we have sufficient accounts of Ameri- 
can statesmen abroad to let us realize the grain of 
truth in the picture of American stalwartness. 

But it behooves a speaker to this society to be a lit- 
tle tender in his remarks concerning the personal car- 
riage and behavior of American ministers, remember- 
ing that we have rejoiced in the possession of four 
such gentlemen. 

As to them we have no authentic accounts, and 
must have recourse to charitable surmises. 

In Crawford's case we know not only what he was, 
and what he would be likely to have done, but, if time 
permitted, more than one vivid picture of him in that 
role could be given, betraying the free and easy feeling 
which always characterized him wherever he was. 

To my mind,/the period of Crawford's stay in Paris 
presents itself as the most stirring and interesting 
time of recent centuries. In the scant two years of 
his residence there, he saw France driven back across 
the Rhine, desperately battling with combined and 
advancing Europe; Napoleon at bay, and no one so 
wise as even then to say whether he would be finally 
crushed, or would, by some wonderful stroke of his 



22 

immense genius free himself, and defeat combined 
Europe. He saw sad Fontainbleaii ; Napoleon ruined ; 
abdicating; made emperor of a little island; Marie 
Louise gone, never to see her throne again. He saw 
Alexander I., Francis of Austria, Frederick William 
of Prussia, Talleyrand, and all the great powers in 
congress assembled, deciding the future of Europe. 
He was there when the Creole empress, the type and 
embodiment of American Creole grace and beauty, 
was dying, sustained, enwrapt and transfigured to the 
last breath by her love for the merciless man who loved 
yet deserted her, her fading accents caught by Napo- 
leon's Russian foe, weeping by her bedside. He saw 
Louis XVHL restored, with his horde of bankrupt 
emigrants ; the new reign with its processions and 
pious expiations. He saw Napoleon's militaires, with 
their war-worn faces and drooping moustachios wan- 
dering through France, homeless, despised .and starv- 
ing. He saw Lafayette and Madam De Stael, and 
became their intimate friend. He saw all Paris shout- 
ing " Vive le rot,'' and the next day crying just as 
lustily, " Vive retnpereurr 

He saw Ney sent out to oppose the invader, and 
witnessed his return by the emperor's side. He saw 
the Bourbons again fugitives from the kingdom, and 
the beginning of the famous Hundred Days; and 
these things seen, that foreign life ended for him. 

During the Hundred Days he returned to his own 
country and never went abroad again. . 



23 



Were not those scenes notable things for the supe- 
rior court Judge to recall in that little court-room 
when he would sit, weary of petty business, upon his 
small judicial throne ? 



When Crawford came back to the United States 
Mr. Madison was still the president, and he hastened 
to offer to the returning minister the same portfolio 
of war which he had declined in i8i\ and which he /^ 
now accepted. But his tenure of this office was very 
short; for, by the election of 1816, Mr. Monroe, be- 
coming president, selected Mr. Crawford for his secre- 
tary of the treasury, with John Quincy Adams, secre- 
tary of state, and John C. Calhoun, secretary of war. 
Thus in the president's cabinet were three men, each 
of whom hoped to succeed his chief. 

It is difficult to fancy men of more opposite charac- 
teristics than the secretary of state and the secretary of 
the treasury. Adams, — cold, severe, unapproachable, 
with burning ambition, and fear that his disposition 
was such as would certainly exclude him. 

Crawford, — open, gay : already so much the favor- 
ite that he had been a caucus candidate before Mon- 
roe's nomination, and was deemed the latter's sure 
successor. 

The Puritan could never understand Crawford's 
command of men and his hold upon their hearts. To 
him it seemed mere jugglery, and, as he would gloomily 



24 

stand upon the Capitol steps, wrapped in his own 
morbid fancies, and see Crawford march gaily off with 
some brother statesman, arm-in-arm, and roaring with 
laughter over some good story or ridiculous joke, in 
the blackness of his despair he would murmur to him- 
self that it was " intrigue, all intrigue," and would go 
home to Jiis closet and record his venom, enforced by 
pious observations, and religious verses. 

They sat together in the same cabinet for eight 
years, in every hour of which Adams hated Crawford 
with a measureless hatred, — of which we will see some- 
thinor a^ain. 

Residence abroad must have been of o-reat service 
to Crawford. The change was noticed by his friends 
at home, one of whom writes that when he returned 
home his appearance and manners made him the most 
imposing gentleman ever seen in Georgia. Fancy the 
appearance of the young country lawyer from upper 
Georgia when he went to Washington, in 1807; and 
then picture to yourself the same adaptive man after 
seven years in the Senate, and two such years as I 
have mentioned in France, and it may not be difficult 
to believe in the friend's impression. 

A little circumstance shows how completely Craw- 
ford suited himself to his environment. During his 
life in Washington as secretary of the treasury he 
used a service of silver so handsome that when he 
went back finally to Georgia it was bought by the 
government for the White House. His needs may 



25 

have required the sale, but that service would, in no 
event, have gone with him to Georgia. Oglethorpe 
County was no place for silver services, and Crawford 
knew too well that amongst those people there was no 
room for that sort of style, if he had any political 
hopes, and those hopes he still must have had. 

I suppose that when he returned from Paris he was 
in the best of his life and powers. Only forty-three 
years of age, with wide experience, his abilities en- 
larged by varied use, he was fit for the best and hard- 
est work that an American statesman can be called to 
do ; and this was shown by his discharge of the duties 
of the treasury for eight years. Parton says of him 
at that time: " His position, in fact, was then so com- 
manding and advantageous that his not reaching the 
presidency prior was either that he disdained intrigue 
or was an unskillful politician."* 

In the beginnino- Adams chuckled over the outlook 
for the secretary of the treasury and even hoped that 
he would not rise to the difficulties. 

" The banks are breaking all over the country," 
says he, " some in a sneaking and some in an impu- 
dent manner. Some with sophisticating evasions, and 
others with the front of highwaymen. Our greatest 
evil is the question between debtor and creditor, into 
which the banks have plunged us deeper than would 
have been possible without them. The bank debtors 
are everywhere so numerous and powerful that they 

* Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson, p. 345. 



26 

control the newspapers throughout the Union, and 
give the discussion a turn extremely erroneous and 
prostrateevery principle of political economy. Craw- 
ford has labors and perils enough before him in 
the management of the finances for the next three 
years." 

But he did manage those finances with consum- 
mate skill and perfect success and surmounted every 
peril ; and his administration of the treasury, com- 
mencing in clouds and storms, ended in clear skies 
and brilliant sunshine. 

« 

Seen at this distance the figures that surrounded 
him in those eight years loom up like far away shores 
in peaceful profile, and not until you come to read 
contemporaneous history can you fancy the agitations 
and intrigues that kept them in restless movement. 
Parties then had not crystallized around great princi- 
ples, but personal qualities, personal ambitions, per- 
sonal followings and personal attacks were the charac- 
teristics of the contests for the greatest prize far more 
than now. Even now, when party is everything, and 
men are least considered, the eye of the country is 
constantly attracted by and turned upon the personal 
behavior of prominent men ; sometimes in the politi- 
cal family of the man they seek to supplant. But in 
1820 and 1824 party differences were almost dead, and 
the struggle was between the friends of Clay, Cal- 
houn, Jackson, Adams and Crawford. The friends of 
each reviled, intrigued against and freely lied about 



27 

the others; and it may be said with regret that the 
principals were not free from taint. 

In all this ignoble contention it is with pleasure 
that we can feel that the Georgian bore himself like 
a man, and though ever attacked by the small pack 
who attended the heels of their particular hero, came 
out with untarnished reputation. Such assaults were 
usually made in private, from mouth to mouth ; sel- 
dom through the public prints. But Crawford was so 
conspicuous and dangerous an enemy that he became 
an exception. 

A man by the name of Ninian Edwards, an' Illinois 
politician of note, an ex-senator, and partisan of 
Adams, preferred charges against him to the senate, 
characterizing his administration of the treasury as 
corrupt. 

A special committee was appointed, upon which 
were Webster, and John Randolph, of Roanoke; and 
after a thorough examination Crawford was completely 
exonerated. This incident is labelled in history as the 
"A. B. plot," and it may give some satisfaction to 
know that after the verdict was rendered the author 
of the plot, who had just been appointed governor of 
a territory, was forced to resign, and disappeared from 
national public and political life forever. 

It has been generally supposed that Mr. Crawford's 
chief opportunity for the presidency arose in the con- 
test of 1824. But such was not the case. When he 
returned from France, in 1815, and became secretary 



28 

of war in Mr. Madison's cabinet, it lay with him en- 
tirely whether he should be president or not. 

In 1S15 ^^^ ^^^ Mr. Monroe were rivals for the 
nomination of the congressional caucus of what was 
known as the Republican party. 

Dr. Jabez Hammond, referring to this contest in 
his " Political History of New York," and comparing 
the aspirants, says : 

" William H. Crawford was a self-made man. He 
was possessed of a vigorous intellect, strictly honest 
and honorable in his political conduct, sternly inde- 
pendent, and of great decision of character. On the 
other hand, Mr. Monroe, although he had been long 
in public life, a considerable part of which consisted 
in the execution of diplomatic agencies, was, speaking 
of him as a candidate for the presidency, not distin- 
guished for vigor of intellect, or for decision of char- 
acter, independence of action, or indeed for any ex- 
traordinary public services. He made no pretensions 
to distinction as a writer, or eloquence as a public 
speaker. He seems to have owed his success in life 
to great caution, prudence, and deliberation in every- 
thing he said or did." 

Dr. Hammond was a member of that caucus, and 
remarks that " When Congress first assembled, as be- 
tween Crawford and Monroe, I have not a particle of 
doubt that a majority of the Republican members 
were for the former. But the caucus was put off from 
time to time, until the session was considerably ad- 
vanced, and such was the influence of the administra- 



29 

tion on its own friends, or from other causes unknown 
to me, when the grand caucus was held Mr. Craw- 
ford received fifty-four votes and Mr. Monroe sixty- 
five, who was therefore nominated for president. 

" Governor Tompkins was nominated for vice-presi- 
dent. Of the members from New York, I believe 
that Messrs. ^rving, Throop and Birdseye were the 
only ones who voted for Monroe." 

There seems no room to doubt that the election of 
Mr. Monroe was chiefly due to Mr. Crawford's volun- 
tary postponement of his claims. In effect he de- 
clined the nomination in favor of Mr. Monroe, and 
this procedure, together with the show of strength 
made by his adherents in the caucus, was supposed 
to place him before all others in the line of succession.* 

I have already alluded to Crawford's bitterest enemy. 
It is curious to see how hatred for the brilliant states- 
man had possessed the Puritan's heart. If it had died 
its natural death — if Mr. Adams had simply disliked 
the other man as one man may detest another, and 
then, — successful or failing in ambition, — passed on 
his way, leaving the bitterness of feeling to fade away 
from memory as do all emotions of any one man, I 
would not now speak of this matter. But it was his 
habit, for good or bad, to keep a diary of his life, in 
which he freely noted his opinions of his fellow men, 
with self-gratulation upon his own performances and 
successes. In those pages his feelings toward Craw- 



* Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson. 



30 

ford occupy a prominent place, and his son* has seen 
fit to publish them. You will find them in any large 
library. They are upon our own shelves, and ten 
thousand readers know Mr. Crawford by its pages to 
one in any other way. 

Having thus freely given them to the world, I am 
at liberty to speak of the feeling so freely displayed 
and published. 

Nothing could exceed its intensity. It was the 
fruit of political jealousy heightened by the constant 
sight of an attractive rival and morbid introspection. 

Says he at one time in his diary, " Crawford was 
made a candidate against Monroe, and in the legisla- 
tive caucus nearly outvoted him. He therefore con- 
siders himself as the natural successor, and has made 
all his arrangements accordingly." 

And, at another, turning his melancholy thoughts 
in upon himself, he felt, and said as the opinion of the 
world, " The result is, that I am a man of reserved, 
cold, austere and forbidding manners. My political 
adversaries say a gloomy misanthrope ; and my per- 
sonal enemies an unsocial savage. With a knowledge 
of the actual defect in my character, I have not the 
pliability to reform it." 

Here was cause enough for hate — w^hich requires 
neither logic nor reason. 

The picture is so forbidding that I would not trouble 
you with its recorded and published expression but 

* Hon. Charles Fnincis Adams. 



31 

for a curious conclusion which the merest justice re- 
quires me to notice. The years from 1816 to 1824 
were spent in leaving to posterity — intentionally and 
avowedly to posterity — his dislike of and opinions 
concerning his great rival. You will find them lib- 
erally besprinkling the pages which he bequeathed to 
his children, and I quote incidentally a few of the ex- 
tracts here and there found, in which this statesman — 
afterward president of the United States — made 
known his opinions in this solemn way to those of his 
own blood. 

I quote his exact language. Says he : 

" The impoj'taitt and critical ijiterests of the country 
are those, the management of which belongs to the de- 
partment of state. Those i7icidental to the treasury 
are in a state which would give an able financier an 
opportunity to display his talents ; b7it Crawford has 
no talents as a fnancier. He is just and barely eqtial 
to the current routine of the business of his office. 
His talent is intrigue.'' 

And at another time : 

''Crawford is not unwilling to see this disagreement 
between the president and congress fester and inflame. 
It will all turn to his account.'' 

''Aug. 19, 1820. The delays arid hesitation of the 
presidertt and the connivance of Crawford in regard 
to these most infamous ti^arisactions have forced me to 
push the subject again and again." 



32 

''CrawfonVs intense passion is unbridled ambition, 
and he has great address in his conduct, thoicgh he has 
exposed to so many the 7iakedness of his heart that he 
cannot be called very profoimd. His ambition has 
been inflamed by success far beyond cither his services 
or talents ; the former of ivhich are very slight, and 
the latter much over-ratedT 

And again : 

''Crawford's efforts to screen Mitchell from punish- 
ment are marked zuith desperation. It is i^npossible 
he should believe him innocent, but at heart he thinks 
slave smuggling no crime, and supposes his ozvn polit- 
ical foidune depends upon Mitchell being cleared. The 
whole transaction is a succession of malpractices to 
screen Mitchell from punishmentr 

And again : 

" They have been the uniform supporters and cham- 
pions of the president and his administration against 
that disguised and insidious but most venomous oppo- 
sition which Crawford has pursued against itT 

And mark you, this remark is made as to the con- 
duct of the secretary of the treasury concerning his 
own chief's administration. 

And again : 

^^ Crawford has been a worm preying upon the vitals 
of the administration luithin its ozvn bodyi' 



33 
And aoain : 



''The pamphlet has produced an effect unfavorable to 
Crawford's reputation as a man, and the present state 
of the treasury does him no credit as a financierr 



And again 



& 



''A worthless and desperate man against whom I 
have been compelled to testify in a court of justice, 
attempts in the face of his own conscience to save him^ 
self from infamy by discrediting my testimony, and 
finds in Mr. Crazoford a ready and willing auxili- 
ary, to s2tpporthim in this scandalous purpose. Craw- 
ford solemnly deposes in a court of justice that which 
is not truer 

He adds a grudging concession to conscience: 

'' I cannot yet bring myself to believe that it has been 
by wilful falsehood. . . . Craiv ford's deposition 
throughotit is marked by a prevaricating spirit of 
embarrassment.'' 

But enough of such quotations, selected almost at 
random from many similar. They show with preci- 
sion what Mr. Adams wished his posterity to believe 
was — really and truly, and in the privacy of communion 
with his own heart, and, it may be said from the pres- 
ence of numerous calls upon his Maker, in commun- 
ion with his God,— his faith. He wrote it, kept it, 
and handed it down to posterity without a single word 
to show that at any time afterwards he had changed 



34 

his mind or saw his errors of fact. Summed up briefly 
they mean that he said and believed, or tried to be- 
Heve, that Mr. Crawford was a man of small capacity, 
without financial ability; in fact, a mere intriguer. 
That he was treacherous, unfaithful to his chief, and 
an enemy of the cabinet of which he was a mem- 
ber. That he was false to the government; false to 
his associates; and false in the mere bearing of testi- 
mony. Incapable, a desperate intriguer, treacherous, 
deceitful and lying. That is what he wished posterity 
to believe of the man who was his rival. You will 
find no change in those sentiments down to the 9th 
day of February, 1825, when this recording angel was 
elected President of the United States. So far from 
any change of mind you will find the same venomous 
pen on the 28th day of December, 1827, while Craw- 
ford was presiding over his little court in Georgia, 
transmitting the same opinion in these words: 

"'Trcachejy of the deepest dye is at the bottom of 
Crawfoi^d' s character. It was before his palsy, com- 
bined with strong mental powers little cultivated and 
a desperate energy of S021I. The zvhole composition 
was' more like Milton's fallen angels than any man I 
ever knew, except that Milton made his devils t7'ue to 
each other!' 

And now what is to be thought of this man, who, 
while so feeling and so writing, on the loth day of 
February, 1825, offered the place of secretary of the 
treasury, a seat in his own cabinet, and the manage- 



35 

ment of the nation's finances to the man whom he 
has thus recorded in vitriolic phrases as guilty of in- 
capacity, unscrupulousness, base treachery and per- 
jury. 

If the rest of the world had thought as Mr. Adams 
said he did; if Mr. Crawford had been esteemed in 
the same way by his chief — Mr. Monroe — and by the 
other public men with whom he was in daily contact, 
there might be some ground for the theory that in 
making this offer Mr. Adams yielded to political ne- 
cessity and was merely weak. But such is not the 
case. He stands alone among his contemporaries in 
his views of Mr. Crawford. In his rage and jealousy 
he wrote feelings and thoughts untrue and unworthy 
of him. He did himself the injustice to hand down 
those expressions to his posterity, unchanged by sub- 
sequent reflection and a returning sense of justice; 
and so he has gone forth in print to the w^orld the au- 
thor of groundless, unqualified, and unretracted libels 
against an eminent man, whose chief fault was his 
prospect of success in the great race in which they 
w^re entered. But the truth and our opinions of the 
persons will not change the verdict of future readers 
of American biography upon the character of the 
great Georgian. 

A man seldom appears to his own generation as he 
genuinely is. Some know one phase of his character, 
some another; few the same. As to living men you 
will hear unlimited differences of opinion from those 



36 

who know them best; and only shadowy, distorted re- 
flections of the fact — the real fact of the veritable 
man — exist in the minds of those who know him only 
by repute. At hand and all around us are false views, 
mistaken opinions, narrow prejudices, foolish admira- 
tions, and unmerited approvals as to the living men 
we see, of sufficient mark or vigor to call for a per- 
sonal judgment upon them. And then when genera- 
tions have passed, and the acute lines of personality 
have become dim in the distance, nothing is left ex- 
cept the large acts which make up the figure seen, un- 
less the sketch is filled out and perfected by contem- 
poraneous minute evidence, to which the genuine man 
falls a helpless victim, or which surrounds him with a 
nimbus of perfection, as the witness may bean enemy 
or partisan friend — an Adams or a Boswell. 

That minute evidence has been furnished concern- 
ing Crawford by Adams. Vouched for by the hand 
of a pious president of the United States, the off- 
spring of jealous hate will be read and naturally ac- 
cepted by the American student when the present 
earnest protest to this little Society will have died 
away forever, even should that protest by any chance 
have the good fortune of a single day's recollection. 
And we may rest assured that, notwithstanding that we 
are now able to see through those thousands of pages 
of bitter feeling to the genuine man there pilloried, 
that man will go down to history not our Crawford — 
the gay, brilliant, open and wise — but Adams's Craw- 
ford ; the low, base, incapable, lying intriguer. 



37 

Do what we may we can never help it. The en- 
emy has defaced one of God's noblest works for all 
human time. 

Fortunately for Mr. Crawford's vindication at this 
late day before us — even this small part of a world, 
too easily fatigued by defensive exposures — he was not 
the solitary animosity nourished by John Ouincy Ad- 
ams's heart ; and the whole of this painful subject and 
exhibition of the morose infirmity coloring the feel- 
ing of this president of the United States may be 
well summed up by one sentence which he himself has 
written, and which must always stand out as his un- 
conscious and unreversed verdict upon himself. Af- 
ter Crawford was sleeping the sleep that knows no 
strife, nor jealousy, no success and no failures, and 
could trouble him no more, Adams wrote : 

''B7t^ fj'om the day that I qtiitted the walls of Haj^- 
va7^d, H. G. Otis, Theophihis Parsons, Timothy Pick- 
ering, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, Jonathan 
Rnssell, William H. Crawford, John C Calhoun, 
Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, John Davis, W. B. 
Giles, and John Randolph, have 7ised 7ip their facul- 
ties in base and dirty tricks to thwai^t my progress in 
life and destroy my characterr 

In this conviction we may well leave him and his 
commentaries upon the great of his day. Some of 
these men werefairly decent and "indifferent honest." 
It is most unlikely that they were all his enemies; 
but if, in fact, they were, I suspect that the world 



38 

could not fail to think that they had indeed just cause 
for their dislike. 



In most respects, however, Mr. Crawford's life in 
Washington was not only successful but exceedingly 
happy until he was stricken with paralysis, in the early 
part of 1824. Up to that moment there seems to 
have been no doubt in the minds of his contempora- 
ries that he would be the next president. He was the 
favorite of the Republican party, so-called, in Con- 
gress, and was the nominee of the congressional cau- 
cus. He was opposed by Mr. Clay, General Jackson, 
Mr. Adams and Mr. Calhoun. It is wonderful to read 
the intriguing of that day — how they mined and coun- 
ter-mined ; bargained and out-bargained ; bought and 
sold. It is certain that Mr. Crawford would have 
been elected but for a baro^ain consummated between 
the friends of Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, by which 
Mr. Clay's friends voted for Mr. Adams, who was to 
make, and did actually make Mr. Clay his secretary 
of state — a bargain afterwards alluded to by John 
Randolph, on the floor of the House, as a combina- 
tion between the " blackleg and the Puritan," which 
delicate expression found its event in a ball subse- 
quently shot by Clay through Randolph's coat. While 
the combination was sufficient to have produced Mr. 
Crawford's defeat, many people have contended to this 
day that but for his ill health he would have been 



39 

elected. This I have not been able to verify, while it 
still remains certain that his health was also a suffi- 
cient consideration to have excluded him from the 
race. A very short time afterwards he resigned him- 
self to the inevitable ; and from that atmosphere of 
fierce contention and pestilential intrigue ; of busy 
industry and national thought ; of the hopes of friends 
and the fears of foes, he came back to the quiet and 
stillness of Georgia rural life, where, in 1827, he was 
appointed judge of the superior court of the circuit 
in which his home was situated. 

Such a return must have been to him equal to death 
itself. He was in his prime when stricken ; only fifty- 
two years ; the most conspicuous figure of the ad- 
ministration, and full of buoyant life and sanguine 
and well founded hope. The future had in it for him 
the highest possibilities attainable in this country. 
To feel himself stricken down while yet his arm 
should be strong ; to be bound hand and foot ; to un- 
derstand and know that while he was yet alive and 
might live for many years, the doors to the American 
political paradise, that for which he would cheerfully 
have given many years of his life, were closed. That 
the great future for him was gone must have been 
agony beyond expression — a veritable sentence of 
death, worse than death. It would be strange indeed 
if Crawford realized at once the length and breadth 
of this decree of living death, and the indications are 
too clear that realize it he did not. His struggle with 



40 

hopeless fate was desperate. While friends watched 
with anxious eye and daily less of hope, he battled on. 
He could not bring his mind, or rather his heart, to 
believe that his vigor had fled forever. He would not 
retire from the contest; and the love and admiration 
and devotion of his friends clung to him and abided 
by him, and exhibited themselves at last in splendid 
fidelity, by forty-one congressional votes for the poor 
paralyzed statesman, in the final count for the presi- 
dency. 

A pathetic account is given by a member of the 
caucus of the manner in which Mr. Crawford received 
the news of the action of Cono-ress : 

" Three of the warmest of the partisans of Craw- 
ford repaired to his residence to announce to him the 
sudden failure of all his hopes. Mr. Cobb was one of 
the three, but he dared not witness the shock of his 
chief's disappointment. The other two, Messrs. Ma- 
con and Lowery, went into the room of the ambitious 
invalid. 

" Crawford was calmly reclining in his easy chair, 
while one of his family read to him from a newspaper. 
Macon saluted him, and made known the result with 
delicacy, though with ill-concealed feeling. The in- 
valid statesman gave a look of profound surprise, and 
remained silent and pensive for many minutes, evi- 
dently schooling his mind to a becoming tolerance of 
the event which had forever thwarted his political el- 
evation. 

" He then entered freely into conversation, and com- 
mented freely on the circumstances of the election as 



41 

though he had never been known as a candidate. He 
even jested and raUied his friend Cobb, whose excess 
of feelinQT had forbidden him to see Crawford until the 
shock had passed, for he knew that the enfeebled vet- 
eran would be shocked. 

" The conversation on the part of these friends was 
not untinged with bitterness and spite, vented against 
the prominent actors in both the adverse political fac- 
tions, but more especially against those of the succes- 
ful party, as being more immediately responsible for 
the crushing overthrow of their own beloved candi- 
date. Crawford himself refrained from giving utter- 
ance to the least exceptional sentiment, and behaved 
during the remainder of his stay in Washington with 
a mildness and urbanity befitting one of his exalted 
station, who had just staked and lost his political for- 
tune." * 

But even when the contest was over and he had re- 
tired to his plain Georgia home, there is reason to be- 
lieve that he did not resign himself to the prospect 
of a terminated career. 

Ever and anon the eyes of the great men of the na- 
tion were turned towards that modest house in Ogle- 
thorpe County, where the judge was living, and peo- 
ple were sent to see him personally, and to report 
whether he would ever be his old self again; and I 
do suppose that at times it must have been so that as 
news would come to him of political changes, and of 
the varied fortunes in life of his old comrades, the old 

* Cobb's Leisure Labors. 



42 

statesman's eye would flash, and he would gather him- 
self together as though to rise and go forth again into 
the fury and fierce turmoil of the personal politics of 
that day. No doubt his soul yearned for the din and 
tumult; the attack and defense; the s.weet incense of 
flattery, and even the delights of repellable slander ; 
for the "foul fat furrows of the circus " that 

" Splashed and seethed and shrieked." 

But that was not to be his good or bad fortune. 
From 1827 to 1834 he discharged the duties of judge 
of a circuit with great diligence and fidelity. I doubt 
if he were a good lawyer, and I strongly suspect that 
he was a poor judge so far as decisions by the books — 
in many cases the printed record of former judicial 
narrowness — are concerned ; but with his great mind 
he made himself the law of his court, and we may not 
doubt that justice was executed in that circuit as 
fully, impartially, and intelligently as it would have 
been by the best book lawyer on the bench. His de- 
cisions were most likely not based on precedents, but 
they made most excellent laws for the people of Ogle- 
thorpe County and of his circuit. And then, after 
ruling his little domain with a firm hand and broad 
mind for seven years, saying many a wise thing and 
cracking many a mellow joke, he died, and was buried 
amongst his own people. 



43 

In this hasty narration of Crawford's Hfe I wish 
that I were able to point to you some great work 
that he achieved ; some lasting memorial that he either 
made or wrote. But such was not the career or char- 
acter of the man, nor was it of the men of his times. 
He and they — and he probably the greatest mind of 
them all — were not men of that sort of aim or life. 
Monroe was president, and is now chiefly known by 
a dogma of American exclusive sovereignty. Clay, 
Calhoun, Randolph, Webster, and the other great 
names of that era come down to us immortal by their 
speeches, and too often by their mistakes. But they 
accomplished little notable, of good, that remains. 
They wrote nothing except speeches that transmits 
them to us in sentence now w^orth reading.! I suppose 
that had occasion offered — if any great question h'ad 
been evoked or forced itself upon the country, the 
master mind that so easily overcame antecedents, and 
made himself whatever was demanded by the hour, 
would have conquered the opportunity, and thus have 
handed himself down to generations of readers of 
American history. But such were not his times. His 
was the life of a man of affairs ; the doing every day 
of those things that were to be successfully done in 
that department of the government to which he was 
called. There was no creative opportunity ; no abid- 
ing mark to be made on the tablet of the country's 
life; and neither time nor inclination served him for 
thought and study and productiveness in fields out- 



44 

side of that which each year absorbed his energies. 
And thus it was that he died and left no mark behind 
him ; no great work done ; no fruits of his splendid 
mind bequeathed to the world ; no wisdom to be ac- 
cepted ; no novel views to be disputed. And that is 
the pity of it, and would seem to be the pitiful epitaph 
that should be inscribed upon the memorial tablets 
of nearly all the statesmen of his day. Jefferson, 
Madison, and Hamilton stand forth with all their vir- 
tues and all their errors, yet constructive, creative, 
productive; while the rest are dead; useless and un- 
profitable to this generation, except in the fruition of 
the official work of their day, and in the constitu- 
tional development of the nation evoked from con- 
gressional argument and struggle. 

Is it not a woeful misfortune to mankind that such 
should be the outcome and ascertainable result of the 
life of a creature so splendidly gifted as must have 
been this man Crawford ; so far above, not only his 
environment, but the mass of all living people ; so 
liberally endowed with all good things that nature 
could bestow, and yet to go hence leaving no more 
behind him than a name scarcely rememberable for an 
even score of years ; known only as the possessor of 
wonderful talents that enabled him to go without falter 
or stop from the legislature of his rustic State to the 
hio:hest national honors. 

But I turn always from these painful reflections to 
the picture of Crawford as he must have been, and, 

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45 

indeed, certainly was, before stricken with paralysis. 
I see the giant so clearly in the cabinet of Mr. Mon- 
roe, the keen bright eyes ever changing from the light 
aroused by earnest debate on questions of state, to 
the sparkle of merriment over some ludicrous side. 
I like best to think of him as he would speak with 
broadest view of Forsyth's troubles with Spain, or 
Andrew Jackson ruling with high hand in Florida, or 
the financial interests of the country. I see him at 
his best, and I give myself some comfort in so seeing 
him, when he would infuse his own light heart into 
the cabinet itself in suggesting to the President, with 
a sly twinkle of those kindly eyes, about the wording 
of a public document, which he said should be made, 
as Governor Telfair instructed his secretary, " a little 
more mysterious"; or when an appointment to ofifice 
of an impartial person was under consideration, jest- 
inor about a man in Georsfia who had two sons with 
whom he was dissatisfied, and being told that a certain 
cause in court was to be referred to two indifferent 
men, said it ought then to be referred to his two sons, 
for they were " two of the damnedest indifferent men 
in the State." 

To me, th'is picture of the gay, wise and brilliant 
statesman is the pleasantest part of the life of Craw- 
ford ; and thus remembering him we may leave him 
to his successes and his calamity ; to the hopes of 
his friends and the fears of his enemies, and, I trust 
that you feel with me, to our love, and sympathy, and 
admiration. 



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